In this interactive field day, join us to learn about soil microbiology with Simeon Kleinsasser, a certified Soil Food Web consultant and product specialist with Hiwassee Products. These workshops are geared toward farmers, gardeners, and ag educators. The event is free to attend but registration is required as space is limited.

Session 1, 9am to 12pm - Introduction to Microscopy for Farmers 

During this session, we will cover the basics of microscopes, how to set them up and use them. We will then cover the basics of different soil food web morphologies to help identify what you are looking at under the microscope. Next, we go over how to collect and prepare a soil, compost and liquid compost sample and then end up with looking at a few samples in class and doing some hands on learning.

Session 2, 1pm to 4pm - Intro to Soil Microbiology for Regenerative Farming

This field day will cover the basics about regenerative farming and some of the practices we can adopt to improve our soil microbiology. We will take a look at what the rhizophagy cycle is and how we can help stimulate it using compost and compost extracts. We will then discuss how to make a good vermicompost and the differences between compost extracts. Finally, we will end up with some demonstrations of the Hiwassee Products Bio Extractor and Vermiflow bin as well as some live microscopy of some different samples.